Athena Account

Typically, Athena accounts are deactivated the January after your graduation date or other leave from MIT. You will be contacted in the 2nd week of November and the 1st week of January via email to your MIT email prior to account deactivation. Though your account will remain active until January, we strongly suggest that you backup the contents of your Athena locker and any other data associated with your account as soon as possible.

Athena accounts may also be deactivated per request of your department or superior after you have left MIT. Please note that this rarely happens and that you will not receive any warning for this type of deactivation.

Also note that upon graduation, your account affiliation will change from Student to MIT Affiliate. As an affiliate you lose several permissions such as access to financial forms and access to some software.

Here is a list of accounts that would be subject to January deactivation:

Students who graduated in January or June.

Students who are not registered for the current term, according to the Registrar's office.

Users who have sponsored accounts and the sponsor did not respond to a renewal request from Accounts

Voucher employees whose supervisors did not respond to a renewal request from Accounts

Visiting Scholars who do not have an appointment for the fall semester just prior to the January deactivation
(September degree candidates appear on the following year's list.)

Additionally, if you require access to certain resources for a valid academic reason, you may have your account sponsored by a current faculty or staff member.

Certificates

As long as your Athena account is still active, you should still be able to download and use your personal certificates. Please note that affiliate, guest and sponsored accounts, do not have the same permissions as you had as a student, faculty, or staff member. This may limit your software download privileges and academic resource privileges (Stellar page limitations and library resources).

Email

Your MIT email will be accessible as long as your Athena account is active, but will be deactivated along with your Athena account. All email will be deleted off the server when this happens, so we highly recommend that you begin backing up your emails and contact anyone who uses this email as their main point of contact and inform them of an alternate address to contact you.

Once your email account is deleted, any emails sent to it will not be delivered and the sender will receive a bounce back message stating your account does not exist. There is currently no way to permanently forward your @mit.edu email address after it has been deactivated.

For graduating students, The MIT Alumni Association offers Email Forwarding for Life (EFL) which gives you an email address (username@alum.mit.edu) that forwards all emails sent to it to an email address of your choice (Gmail, Yahoo!, Hotmail/Outlook.com, etc.). This is not at all associated with your MIT email address. Any questions or issues with EFL should be directed to the Alumni Association's EFL support via email help@alum.mit.edu or by phone at (617) 253-8245.

Wireless Networking

Until your account is deactivated, you will continue to be able to use the MIT wireless networks normally. After that time, you can still use The MIT GUEST Wireless Network if you visit campus.

Financial / Employment

As long as your Athena account is active and and are still actively employed at MIT, you will be able to access your ePaystubs, eW-2s, and other employment and financial information from Atlas from a computer with personal certificates installed. If your Athena account has been deactivated, you have MIT affiliate / guest status, or are no longer working in your position at MIT, you will need to contact HR / Payroll via email payroll@mit.edu or by phone at 617-253-4255. If your account is active and you are having issues with certificates, then please contact the MIT Computing Helpdesk.

Software

Most software offered by MIT on our software distribution page is only available to current students, faculty, or staff. Please note that graduating students' accounts are changed to MIT Affiliate after graduation. If your account is deactivated, or your account has a status of "Affiliate," you will no longer be eligible to download most software. You may check your account status yourself using our People Directory. If your "title" shows up as MIT Affiliate, then you are an affiliate; if it shows up as your current title, then you most likely retain the same affiliation as you have before.

If you have downloaded software from MIT in the past. in most cases you will need to stop using this software upon leaving MIT. Exceptions to this for graduating students are Filemaker Pro, Windows, and Microsoft Office. The terms of use are listed on the information page for each piece of software on the software distribution page.

Operating Systems

Our installs of Windows check with our KMS server periodically to ensure that they are genuine. upon graduation, IS&T sends email to those students who have downloaded a Windows operating system at their MIT email address with a script that will activate your operating system permanently. If you are a student that has graduated and lost your email containing the activation script, please contact the MIT Computing Helpdesk by email at helpdesk@mit.edu or by phone at (617) 253-1101.

Due to license agreement restrictions, faculty or staff that have left MIT are unable to continue using our copy of Windows, and will need to purchase their own. If your Athena Account is still active, then you may be able to keep it active for a short period of time by connecting to the MIT VPN (vpn.mit.edu). We highly recommend you purchase a valid copy of Windows as soon as possible, as once your account is deactivated you will no longer be able to connect to VPN and Windows will expire after a period of time of not having contact with our KMS server.

Microsoft Office

The license terms for Microsoft Office is similar to that of the Operating Systems. If you are a graduating student that has downloaded Microsoft Office with your certificates, you should receive an email sometime before graduation with an activation script that, when run, will permanently activate Office. If you are a student that has graduated and lost your email containing your activation script, please contact the MIT Computing Helpdesk.. Again, this is not the case for faculty and staff, and they should pursue buying their own copy of Microsoft Office as soon as possible, as it too will expire without contact to our KMS server.

Academic Resources

Library Resources

Until your ID Card expires, graduating students should be able to continue borrowing materials from the MIT Libraries. According to MIT Libraries' website, "The MIT Libraries encourage alumni/ae of the Institute to make use of the Libraries during their visits to campus." For a fee, they may get a special Library Privilege Card that will allow them to check out materials from the Libraries' collections.

In most cases, alumnae will have access to e-journals and other electronic resources up until their account is deactivated in mid January as long as they have valid personal certificates. After this, they will only be able to access e-journals and databases that do not require authentication. This type of access will only be available on campus; off campus access to databases and e-journals is restricted to current students, staff, and faculty due to licensing restrictions, regardless of whether they require authentication.

Stellar

If you have a valid Athena account and you are listed in the Stellar site's membership list, you should still be able to log in and access the course materials for a Stellar site you are a member of. However, restricted materials are not available after the end of a semester due to copyright. If you need access to restricted materials after the end of a semester, please contact your instructor directly.

Transcripts

To request online transcripts via the WebSIS student portal, you need to have an active Athena Account and must be registered to take classes at MIT. When the Summer session after your graduation starts, you will no longer be able to use the method stated above.

Students who were enrolled at MIT in the past and have an Infinite Connection account can order transcripts online. For questions about setting up an Infinite Connection account, please contact the Alumni Association.

If you do not have an Infinite Connection account, you may order your transcript online by creating an account with the Registrar's transcript ordering service. If the you had previously ordered transcripts as a student, you will be presented with the option to convert the existing account into a former student account. Another alternative would be to follow these instructions to send the Registrar a signed request by mail.

ID Card

In general, ID cards for graduating students expire the January or June after your graduation date. All members of the MIT community may find their ID expiration date on the front of their ID card in the bottom right corner. Once this card expires, you will no longer have access to any buildings or services requiring your MIT ID, including print quotas, TechCash accounts, and library borrowing. General building access will be revoked at midnight the day of card expiry, but this information will remain in the system for two weeks in the event your card is renewed.

For faculty and staff, ID cards are also subject to deactivation without warning per request of your department or supervisor after you have left MIT.

Graduating students may request a free Alumni ID card, which allows basic building access privileges to select buildings on campus, provides eligibility for Coop membership, and enables free admission to the MIT Museum. For more information, contact Card Services.

T-Passes and CharileCards

T-Passes, including LinkPass and Commuter Rail passes, will be shut off as soon as you leave MIT. Any CharlieCard issued through MIT T-Pass or MIT ID card with CharlieCard functionality will continue to function as a pay as you go CharlieCard. You may keep these CharlieCards when you leave MIT. For more information please contact the Parking Office or email tpass@mit.edu.

MIT Purchasing Discounts

Most MIT discounts on hardware and other physical items are accessed with an MIT Personal certificate. They will continue to be available to you so long as you still have a valid MIT Personal certificate. For more information, see: